museums

No-one warned us that Sweden would be COLD. To be honest, we sort of knew it anyway, but choose to ignore it and worry about it when we got here. Our first warning was when we stumbled out of the train station on our way to the hostel, and noticed everyone wearing snow jackets. Our second warning came when we realised that our hostel offered a free sauna. Hmm (fact: in Sweden there is a sauna for every 3 people). Despite the weather (which really isn’t all that cold – after all, it could be snowing), we have been enjoying ourselves in this Scandinavian country. Did you know Pippi Longstockings (in Swedish: Pippi Långstrump) is Swedish? That’s why she has long stockings – to keep warm!

Playing in the rain in Stockholm

We became braver on the second day and decided nothing would stop us. And then it started pouring down with rain. We ended up wandering around town in our ridiculous looking $2-shop plastic bag ponchos. Eventually we found a museum which listed ‘fri’ entry (our language skills are getting much better, I bet you didn’t know I could read Swedish!!!). The museum turned out to be the Royal Armory, which had, amongst other things, the clothing worn by one of the Swedish kings when he was assassinated – blood stains and all. The best bit was when we stumbled across a kids section all about princesses. They had swords to fight with, a frog to kiss and even a colouring-in area. To the amusement of one of the tour groups we sat down and did some great artwork! We also visited Skansen (large open air museum, they have brown bears and elk) and the Vasa Museum (huge ship), which were interesting, although they didn’t provide crayons and play swords.

Tash concentrating hard on her picture

Spent a couple of days visiting Sophia, a friend of Tash’s. Sofia is studying in the town of Uppsala, 45 minutes north of Stockholm. She took us to a couple of parties – one in her ‘nation’ and a corridor party. All students of her uni join a ‘nation’ when they start studying at university – the Swedish students join different nations based on what area in Sweden they are from, whilst the international students get to choose which one they’ll join. The nation organises parties, dinners, extra curricular activities, that kind of thing. The corridor party was weird, a bit like what the U.S. TV shows portray college life to be. Everyone goes to a particular hall in one of the student flats (in our case building 9, floor 7), and party in the corridor. Loud music, BYO beers, its like a paddock party back home, just cos we’re in cold Sweden they have to do it inside! Sophia showed us around Uppsala a bit as well, we got to see the ancient burial mounds of the Vikings in Gamla Uppsala. Although I envy the fact that she gets to live here for 6 months, I’m glad its Sophia and not me that’s going to be braving the Scandinavian winter.

107 days to Christmas is what the sign in Amsterdam’s Christmas Shop read. And to think I wasn’t counting! Amsterdam is a lot of fun, in some ways the town reminds me a lot of Surfers Paradise, probably very similar to what Queenland is like during schoolies time. We’ve been staying in a hostel in the middle of the red light district, 24 people in our room. We are the only females, the rest are mainly 20 year old English schoolboys. And they act it. Although one of the boys had us in stitches the other night – whilst he was getting ready to go out he pulled an iron out of his bag and proceeded to iron his shirt. Guys back home have a lot to learn from the Europeans!

Wandering around the streets is a lot of fun – you never know what to expect. There are always a few unsavioury guys hanging around the front of our hostel, always trying to sell us some ‘fun’. Tash says it reminds her of back home in St. Kilda. Next door to our hostel we have signs promising ‘live sex show’ and ‘fun girls’, whilst only a couple more doors on there are girls wearing next to nothing waving at men through their windows. Of course, there are coffee shops all over the place, most are tiny little cafe style shops, proudly displaying their green and white sticker that claim they are a registered, government endorsed coffee shop, legally allowed to sell marijuana and other cannabis related items. Each has their own menu of what they sell – almost none of the shops sell alcohol as well.

Plenty of other things have kept us busy, in particular, the hunt for good food. Amsterdam has lots of food, unfortunately not all of it is very delicious. We’ve been rather impressed with the fries stores – you get a ‘cone’ of fries, and then a choice of sauces. Some places have up to 30 sauces, quite impressive. And I am [proud/disgusted/surprised/forced] to admit that I have now eaten my first burger from a vending machine. FEBO, a fast food chain all over Amsterdam (possibly all over the Nederlands, I’m not sure), specialises in its burger vending machines. The burger wasn’t too bad, tasted a bit better than McD’s, to tell the truth.

Hmm, what burger should I get from the vending machine? (answer: none!)

We spent the better part of two days visiting friends in Den Haag (The Hague). It was great to see a different part of the world from a locals point of view, there’s so much you miss just being a visitor. Maureen and Michael, who are avid travelers, showed us many of the sights, including the Escher museum (fantastic), the cute town of Delft and the beach in Den Haag (very interesting, a whole heap of restaurants are temporarily set up for the summer, along the beach front, and are taken down at the end of summer). Whilst in Delft I tried the national food of pickled herrings, and convinced Maureen to as well. Not really my favourite food… Maureen also took us to see a panorama painting, which was fantastic. We stood in the middle of a 1880’s painting that went all the way around us, made you feel like you were in the painting itself.

Mmm, pickled herrings with onion

Well, we’ve just arrived in Stockholm, so we’re now getting ready to take on the Vikings. Hope every-ones looking after themselves,
luv bobs

Well, everyone had better appreciate the trouble gone into writing this… It turns out that keyboards in France are different to those everywhere else. Just small differences (the letters ‘q’ and ‘a’ have swapped places, as have ‘;’ and ‘m’) but its enough to make the thought of typing an email horrendous. Anyway, enough complaining, we are in Paris, after all! Arrived after a very long night of sleeping in Glasgow airport – we were 3 of at least 100 other people who decided to make the smokers lounge our bed for the night. We were the odd ones out – we didn’t bring mattresses or sleeping bags, unlike the many others. Although it was nice and sunny in Scotland, Paris was windy and raining. So very typical of our luck!

We’ve been eating our way through all the delicacies of Paris – baguette with jam for brekky, baguette with cheeses for lunch and baguettes and snails for dinner. Well, at least that’s the way it seems. We also have nutella crepes for desert, accompanying each meal. Of course, if we get sick of all the cheese we can take a break and have a bottle of 2 euro wine instead…

Of course we’ve been seeing the sights as well as eating. Kinda. We make sure our sight-seeing fits around the eating, don’t want to miss a meal! A couple of nights ago, we climbed the Eiffel Tower. Alot of steps (not as many as the Yellow Mountains in China), but definitely worth it. The view across the city at night was fantastic. Last night we had a picnic in the gardens in front of the Eiffel Tower, thankfully the small children didn’t come near our area, we must have been scowling enough to keep them away. We’ve also gone and seen Le Sacré-Coeur, a really big churchy thing on the hill behind our hotel. The dome was amazing to see, all the tourists filing past, one-by-one was just hilarious. Notre Dame was similar – an spectacular building, but the amount of tourists around was just frightening.

The Eiffel Tower at night

The catacombs were great. A couple of hundred years ago, it was decided that the cemeteries were too full, so the French decided to dig up all the bodies and dump them in an abandoned mine. At some stage, the person in charge decided to do it decoratively, and so all the bones are lined up, using a combination of skulls and femurs to create patterns in the walls. The over-all effect is quite unique – eerie and intriguing all at the same time.

Skull and Crossbones at the Catacombs

We’ve also seen the rest of the traditional sights, such as the Louvre (got to see the Mona Lisa, should have seen the tourists at that place!) and the Arc de Triomphe (huge huge round-about, so many cars). We also spent a great cuople of hours wandering around Versailles, enjoying the gardens and looking over King Louis XIII and his son, Louis XIV’s chateus. The rest of our time has been spent soaking up the atmosphere (whilst eating crepes) and enjoying our very own bathroom. Now we’re preparing for our week in Germany, should be a heap of fun, will swap from bread to snags… luv yas, bobs

Well, its been a hell of a week, and its only just beginning! As I’m sure everyone’s aware, the G8 summit is being held in Edinburgh this week, and as a result, the city is FULL of people ready to protest. Everyday more and more people arrive at the hostel with backpacks, looking for a bed. Everywhere is full, it seems many people are just camping out on the sides of the streets. People at our hostel are making money by ‘selling’ their beds, and sleeping in the tv room for a night (not me, I need a good nights sleep in a bed, otherwise WATCH OUT!!!). Elysha, Nick and I joined the protest on Saturday morning, it was great. Really uplifting, everyone was in a good mood, we had bongo drums and guitars accompanying us the whole time. More people than were expected showed up, they think there were about 200,000 people marching. Protesters were asked to wear white, so we could form a giant white band around the city. However, I’m a backpacker, and all good backpackers stay away from white clothing – it gets dirty way too easily. I managed to rustle up a white rain jacket though, so I was set. The march started and ended at the meadows, the sports area. People were everywhere, the crowd marching was generally a younger one, lots and lots of young families with children in tow.

The march went off without a hitch, there was one slight disturbance when some masked teenagers caused some trouble in a bar, police took them in but didn’t charge them. Of the 200,000, only one person was charged, with drug possession. Since Saturday there’s been a few more marches, theres one on right now, sounds like it’s a fair bit more violent – its a protest by an anarchist groups dissent, there have been police riot vans screaming along Princes street all morning, and I can hear about 3 helicopters hanging around outside. Apparently, police have barricaded a large group of protestors on princess street in front of the castle, with helicopters floating low above them, and a heap of police everywhere. Sounds exciting, I might go down soon and see whats happening.

The lead up to the G8 has been fun to watch. Alot of the shops boarded up their windows – Interestingly, McDonald’s, Burger King and Starbucks didn’t bother – although they do have a heap more security on. And they seem to have their own contingency of police hanging around. We were watching one of the marches yesterday, one of the guys suggested throwing a McD’s drink in amongst the protestors, to see how much trouble it would cause. We are all a bit put out that whilst the newsagent has boarded up his shop, McD’s is getting away without it, we want to see DAMAGE!!!

Boarding up shops in Edinburgh

Apart from the G8, not much has been happening. I’ve been racing around trying to find accommodation for mum, she’s arriving next week. Elysha, Tash and I were discussing the possibility of her hotel having a bathtub, and ended up basically drooling with the prospect of having a bath – the things you miss when you’re traveling! I went to one of the museums in town last week, the People’s Story. Was really interesting, full of quotes from older generations, about what Edinburgh used to be way back when. Good fun. We’re talking about going on a ghost tour tonight, should be fun. Hopefully not too many protesters about. Last night we went out (normal Sunday occurrence). Expected lots of people to be out drinking, considering how many people are in town at the moment, but there was hardly anyone out, everyone’s too scared in case trouble starts…